Louis Dubin
Louis Myerberg Dubin is a fourth-generation real estate developer who develops upscale condominiums, typically in large east-coast United States cities. He is a founding partner of Redbrick LMD, an opportunistic real estate investment and developments company headquartered in Washington, D.C. His former New York based firm Athena often sold condominiums to middle and upper-middle class buyers. His firm converted landmark buildings into luxury condominiums, one of which was bought by Charles Bronfman. He designed buildings to feature art by artist-sculptors such as Jonathan Cramer. He was described by New York Magazine as being one of the "new generation of uptown A-listers".
Background and education
Dubin's great-grandfather, grandfather, and father were all developers. He studied political science at Washington and Lee University. During his college years, he met future wife, Tiffany Rounick, whose stepfather was A. Alfred Taubman, the Detroit-based shopping mall pioneer. Dubin earned a J.D. degree at American University Washington College of Law. The pair were married in 1989 at the "socially prestigious" Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan and fashion reporters from the New York Times described that guests wore "crisply tailored suit jackets worn over long, narrow skirts."Career
A few months after graduating from law school, Dubin built 24 homes outside Annapolis and sold them for $150,000 each. The project gave him credibility to work with family members on "somewhat of an even keel". He worked in his family's real estate development firm as general counsel and helped the family develop single-family, high-rise condominium, and planned community properties.Dubin worked for the government in the position of director of the $1.7 billion National Land Fund for the Resolution Trust Corporation. This agency disposed of assets acquired by the government during the early 1990s. It exposed him to the world of high finance "a tool that was somewhat lacking in my skill sets" he recalled later. Dubin formed strategic partnerships between the private sector and the government. He described his role: "I was a federal official running clean up for all the non-performing land in the United States." He serves as chairman of the Maryland Governor's Workforce Development Board.
Athena
In 1993, Dubin founded the Athena Group, a residential real estate investment and development fund. It was structured legally as a limited liability company or LLC. Dubin was both president and CEO.The business approach was to identify opportunistic real estate projects. "My goals at the time were to buy real estate below replacement cost and to redevelop neglected assets." Dubin hired Rosen Consulting to do macroeconomic forecasts of job development and household formation in key cities in the United States. The next step was having acquisitions people hunt for opportunities in those markets. Dubin hired analysts typically with Master's degrees in Real Estate as well as MBAs who he felt were "well rounded individuals" and "tactile with numbers" yet had a feel for "concepts and form." Employees were encouraged to listen attentively to the market, and included former lawyers, bankers, textile design curators, tank platoon commanders, architects, and construction managers. Athena had weekly development meetings with employees at all levels as a way, in part, "for teaching the younger people the business." The firm cooperated with state and local officials. Dubin saw his work as a developer at the confluence of many forces, including investors, regulators, architects, and found the work to be fascinating. Athena developed a proprietary fund in association with large investment banks such as Morgan Stanley and UBS which gave it ready access to cash for large projects; for large deals, Athena solicited partners. Dubin described his firm as existing in a "nether land where we have the capitalization of a public company and the nimbleness of a private company." In the early 1990s, the firm had a return on investment equity over 30%, according to Dubin.
While the principal focus of Athena was on residential properties with "high barriers to entry" in the eastern United States, principally New York City, the firm also did projects involving offices, condominium conversions, land development deals, distressed debt purchases, and renovation projects. Dubin's role in the firm has been described as developing and cultivating relationships with parties necessary for big deals, including financiers, advisers, investment banks, developers, architects, and builders.
The firm screened and analyzed possible acquisitions. When it found properties to buy, it would analyze a prospective purchase in depth, including doing due diligence, which is a comprehensive real estate checklist process of examining systematically such details as environmental issues, geological and marketing factors. It thrived during the real estate boom years during the early and middle years of the 2000s.
In the early 2000s, Athena bought a building in Miami's South Beach called The Waverly. It got an internal rate of return in the low 20s, according to Dubin. Around this time the firm had a project in Providence, Rhode Island, called the "903", which featured prices in the range of $350 per square foot. In 2002, the firm encountered a setback when 78-year-old Taubman was convicted of price-fixing in connection with his ownership of the Manhattan-based auction house Sotheby's and he spent ten months in jail.
In 2004, Athena had $265 million in residential and commercial sales. Condos were pitched at middle to upper-middle class buyers, and prices were at or below the median prices for their respective cities, and ranged from $200 to $2,000 per square foot, according to Dubin. By 2005, during the real estate boom, it had invested $200 million in properties worth a total of $1 billion, according to one estimate. At one point, the firm had a construction and development pipeline exceeding $1.8 billion, according to one source. From 2002 to 2005, Athena focused on condominium conversion projects, but after 2005, shifted to real estate development which included building new high-rise structures from the ground up. It worked with Detroit-based construction contractor Walbridge Aldinger on tasks such as preconstruction, estimating, predevelopment and construction-bidding work. In 2005, the shortage of prime space in downtown Manhattan caused several hotels to be converted to condominiums. Dubin explained that "economic calculations heavily favor conversion... For a 1,000-square-foot hotel suite, you could get $2 million. At a top hotel with services and a great location, let's take those two rooms—they have to throw off $400 to $500 a night, and they have maybe 70 percent occupancy... In the best of cases, they could net $200,000 . Property taxes take 35 percent, maybe 40 percent for operations—that's only a 5 to 6 percent return."
In the first part of the decade as well, Athena considered investments in projects in Russia but pulled out because of concerns about timing. Athena did projects in the suburbs of Washington, Florida, Providence, North Carolina, Utah, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Athena's projects have been financed by firms such as Morgan Stanley and UBS AG. By 2008, it had up to 45 employees with a main office in New York and branch offices in Los Angeles, Miami, and Washington, and had 4,500 residential units under management, according to a source based on company information. By 2009, according to one estimate, the firm had completed or developed roughly $2.5 billion in assets. The firm streamlined payment systems by using software from firms such as AvidXchange which digitized invoices.
The firm made campaign contributions to both Democrats and Republicans, including John McCain, Mitt Romney, Robert Menendez, and Hillary Clinton.